looking at what is being done in Zbrush it seem to me that this is a powerful yet largely ignored feature of poser5 especially with sci fi mechs and such. is there anyone using this to add detail at render time in their work?? just curious

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I've used displacement for water effects, carpets and ebossing logos. It's great, like bump maps on steroids.

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I use a lot of displacement in my free shader pack. I haven't built many painted displacement maps yet, but that's because I haven't had time more than anything else. The jolly troll is one of the better examples of using displacement maps I've seen in Poser, so yes, there are people around that are using it and doing it well.

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The reason (I think) there isn't much use of the feature is the fact that bringing up Poser5 (and/or it's features) tends to bring out the Poser5-player-haters (as I like to call them grin) That said - I use it quite frequently. It's much better than a simple bump map (as the object silouhette matches the lighting) but one has to be careful when using it. Used on the character itself - one must make sure that ALL the materials use it otherwise things look funky, and using it on clothes tends to make props look wrong (for example, shirts/pants "displacing" into belts). My creations take this into account by simply masking the "belt area" of the underlying cloths (using a grayscale texture) and having the displacement under it ~0. Actually makes things look that little bit cooler when you can see the belt actually "pulling in" the underlying cloth :)

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I would have to say that applying displacement mapping from ZBrush to Poser figures is INCREDIBLY hard. I did it once (see link to my gallery image) - but it was not easy. The probably is that you paint your displacements in zrush onto your figure, but it creates a displacement map for a slightly modified figure, not your original one (yes, I know the doco says otherwise - but try it yourself). So for the image above, I had to delete Don, then import the new cage in (from ZBrush), and apply the displacement map to it. Displacement mapping is (IMHO) not quite what it is cracked up to be. For starters, if you have concave areas (like Don's spine), it causes problems, since the two sides of the cave - if displaced enough, end up crossing over (and you can see examples of it in my image above). I think we need to wait for the next generation of modelling packages before this becomes viable for Poser human figures.

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face_off, This is a combination of two problems I think. Firstly, did you set & restore a morph target in ZBrush for this? If not, then the base cage is going to have differed slightly & hence the displacements are going to be out of whack (as you experienced). If you need clarification - feel free to buzz me on this. The other problem I think is perhaps due to the scale of the displacements used. For example, the flexing picture you linked to has quite alot of muscle bulk. This is something I would have implemented through a combination of a morph target (the altered 'level 1' cage from ZBrush) & the displacement map. Typically, I join my mesh into one solid "whole" (the java-based Compose tool is great for this) before importing into ZBrush, export both the altered mesh & displacement map, then use the altered mesh as a morph target & the displacement map on top for the "finer details". It can work quite well when you use this methodology!

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EK - yep - did the store and restore mt. 100 times! I just couldn't believe that it didn't work like the tut said it would. But....it doesn't. To add to the frustration, you cannot have different material groups in your figure which have overlapping uv's - otherwise it crashes when making the displacement map. So there is a bit of mesh surgery required between the export from Poser the to import into Zbrush step. So if you are dealing with M3 or V3, you are in a world of pain, because you are going to have to separate his/her head from body, and then somehow get them back together again in P5. As for the morph target approach you mention - yep - I agree. Problem is, you need to paint your muscles on the unposed figure in zbrush to make the morph target. I wanted to paint on the posed figure (which is what I did). I've actually found it better to do the mesh surgery, then import into ZBrush, paint the displacements, then export the whole mesh out (without doing displacements), and inport the new mesh into Poser. Then make the original model's material fully transparent for the body parts that have been imported and render the old figure with the new prop. Works well, although I've had problems with my figures shadwoing themselves after coming back from ZBrush (see attached link for horrible self-shadowing - but using the approach above). Would be helpful to see some examples of your work with displacement mapping in P5.

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I have ask in pyhon script forum (time ago) about a python script for create morph target from B/W teplate, from the same teplate of textures ;-) http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1596625 Maybe create this python will be very very useful for who want create new character with poser without use other softwares .... best; Andygraph